District Court Holds that Reservation Over Attorney Fee Entitlement May Not Toll Statute of Limitations
It seems there is no statute of limitations on the First District Court of Appeals’ issuing opinions interpreting the actual statute of limitations under Florida’s Workers’ Compensation Act. In yet another case addressing the time limitations for filing petitions for benefits under Florida Statutes Section 440.19, the First DCA held that a party’s purported reservation over attorney’s fees as part of a voluntary dismissal, before an employer/carrier accepts compensability of a claim or compensability is adjudicated on the merits, does not toll the statute of limitations.
Generally, Florida’s Workers’ Compensation Act bars filing any petition for benefits beyond two years from the date the employee became aware that he suffered an accidental work-caused injury. A pending, legally sufficient petition for benefits filed within that two-year period, however, tolls that statute's running.
In Murphy, the claimant alleged a work-related accident on September 10, 2016. The employer/carrier initially authorized some medical appointments but ultimately denied compensability of the claim in its entirety. The claimant then filed his first petition for benefits, to which the employer/carrier responded with a full denial and furnished no further benefits. The claimant then filed a notice of dismissal of the first petition for benefits, but he reserved jurisdiction over claims for entitlement to and the amount of attorney’s fees and costs.
Approximately two years later, the claimant filed a second petition for benefits, requesting indemnity benefits for the same accident date. The employer/carrier responded with a denial based on the expiration of the two-year statute of limitations.
The employer/carrier then filed a motion asking the Judge of Compensation Claims to require the claimant to file a verified motion for attorney's fees and costs relating to the first petition for benefits under Rule 60Q-6.124(3), (5), FLA. ADMIN. CODE. The judge granted the motion, but the claimant failed to file any such verified motion for attorney's fees and costs. Consequently, the judge dismissed the claim for fees and costs from the first petition for benefits.
The claimant went on to file a third petition for benefits and a fourth petition for benefits, both of which were again denied by the employer/carrier on statute of limitations grounds. The claimant voluntarily dismissed the second and third petitions for benefits, and the judge dismissed the fourth petition for benefits on the same grounds, which prompted the appeal to the First District Court of Appeal.
The Murphy majority framed the central question as whether a claimant’s petition for benefits that is later voluntarily dismissed without the employer/carrier accepting compensability and providing benefits, or a judge adjudicating entitlement to compensation or medical benefits, continues to toll the statute's running if the claimant reserves jurisdiction over entitlement to attorney’s fee as part of the dismissal.
Writing for the majority, Judge Tanenbaum answered the question by analyzing the nature of attorney’s fees. He likened fees under Section 440.34 to a prevailing-party fee provision in civil litigation and concluded that a claim for workers’ compensation attorney’s fees is “ancillary to the claim” for benefits. In this case, once the claimant dismissed his first petition for benefits without securing any benefits or obtaining a successful adjudication on the merits, “there never was going to be a resolution or disposition of a claim for benefits that would give rise to an entitlement to the fees… .” Essentially, since the claimant could not possibly show that he secured benefits pursuant to the first petition for benefits, the fee claim in that petition for benefits was a nullity, even though he reserved jurisdiction over fee entitlement. Because the fee claim in the first petition for benefits remained “ancillary” and “collateral,” rather than one that had “ripened” through the securing of benefits or an adjudication on the merits, and two years from the accident date had elapsed before another petition for benefits was filed, all petitions for benefits after the first were time barred.
Judge Thomas wrote a concurrence in which she agreed with the result only but not with the majority’s reasoning. For Judge Thomas, the majority’s comparison of fees under 440.34 to civil litigation fees was misplaced. She contended that whether a petition for benefits is “pending” is a purely jurisdictional question and should not require a fact-finding analysis to determine if a claim for fees has merit. In other words, “[w]hether the fee claim has merit or the claimant was a ’prevailing party’ has no bearing on the ’pending’ status of fee claim (because it is jurisdictional) or germane to the effect of a pending fee entitlement claim on the SOL.”
In contrast to the majority’s framing, Judge Thomas stated that the court’s disposition did not require analysis of whether a pending claim for entitlement to attorney's fees tolls the statute “because there was no pending claim for entitlement to attorney's fees when the second petition for benefits was filed well over two years after the accident and any indemnity or medical benefits were provided.” She highlighted prior case law (also cited by the majority), holding that once a petition for benefits is dismissed in its entirety (including any claims to fees and costs), it is regarded as if it were never filed. She then pointed to the procedural fact that the judge dismissed the first petition for benefits after granting the employer/carrier’s motion to compel him to file a verified motion for fee, which the claimant did not do. At that point, the first petition for benefits was dismissed in its entirety and treated as if it were never filed.
Relying on other prior case law, she explained the difference between the concepts of a petition for benefits’ “pending” status in contrast to the concept of “tolling.” Only two tolling events exist under 440.19; the payment of indemnity benefits or the furnishing of medical care. Whether a petition for benefits is “pending” is simply a question of whether all issues raised by the petition for benefits are fully resolved or otherwise disposed of; once they are, the petition for benefits is treated as though it were never filed. In Judge Thomas’s view, since the claimant’s first petition for benefits was dismissed in its entirety and the second petition for benefits was filed more than two years after the accident, it and all subsequent petitions for benefits were untimely.
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